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123 articles
Imagine that you have a 55-gallon barrel that's been sitting outside for years. People have walked by it. Rain has filled it up so that it's always full of water. To stare at it, it's just a barrel of water. One day, you stick a garden hose into it and turn the water on full...
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As we watch these federal judges ignore the Constitution where it says in Article II, Section 1, Clause 1: "The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America." It's called the "vested clause." President Trump has every right to manage the...
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Managing expectations is a skillful art. Too often, we get out over our skis. "Newly sworn-in FBI director Kash Patel is weighing releasing the complete Jefferey Epstein flight logs, after promising to do so if confirmed by the Senate to the position." The crazy thing about this...
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On April 15, 2009, I was one of four organizers of the inaugural Tea Party in Des Moines, Iowa. Charlie, Doug, Rochelle, and I began our work prior to that, along with hundreds of other organizers across the country, to protest a socialist government that had been installed in...
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Yesterday, I was at a training in Williamson County. A woman raised her hand and asked, "What do we do about the media?" "What do you mean?" I asked her. "We have a local paper that never reports anything but left-wing junk. How do we get them to report the facts and not just...
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We hire our representatives to listen to us and then do what we ask of them. It isn't hard. What becomes hard is when they have an agenda that competes with what we ask of them. An election, if an incumbent has a viable opponent, becomes a binary job performance review - approve...
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I love the enthusiasm that spills out of the grassroots campaign training seminars that I'm giving. It's exciting to watch people realize that they can profoundly impact elections with just a bit of discipline and commitment. The first part of the seminar is helping the...
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Robert was a good man - a really good man. And I say "was" because regrettably he passed away over the weekend. I found out in a phone call from a friend early Sunday morning. I'd spoken to Robert on Valentine's Day for a half hour about Grassroots America things. We cracked...
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Laughter comes from being surprised. Whether it's an unexpected fall someone has, where we apologize for laughing and then ask if the person is okay... or the baby who giggles at the peekaboo game... or the woman laughing at the comedian onstage who told an undiscovered truth...
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Over time, everything tends to break down. Rocks weather. Buildings fall into disrepair. Our bodies age, and increasingly with less and less grace. This is a concept called entropy. In thermodynamics, entropy is the spare, unused energy that can spawn chaos. It tends to move...
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In life, when we encounter something we don't like, it's easy to criticize. And so we do. "This is a problem!" we announce to the world. Thumbs down. The harder thing to do is to problem-solve. Solving a problem requires optimism that the problem can be solved. It requires a bit...
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The Republican Party of Texas legislative priorities two years ago were chiefly about culture issues and rule of law. Election integrity, border security, stop sexualizing Texas kids, etc... none of them had to do with money. When I looked at the big lobbyists in Austin and what...
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A guy named Hugh taught me to set the expectations of others when I was in my 30's. At the time, I thought, "Why am I responsible for their expectations?" But as I matured in life, I came to understand that anger and disappointment only happen when someone encounters something...
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Bill Kristol is an ardent anti-Trumper. Regarding what Trump had accomplished in the first 100 hours of President Trump's new term in office, he said: "Welcome to North Korea," alleging that this is a dictatorship and we will all suffer for it. He pretends to be a Republican...
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The grassroots movement has been called "astroturf" for a long time. Nancy Pelosi did it when the TEA party emerged back in 2009. "It's not really a grassroots movement. It's astroturf by some of the wealthiest people in America to keep the focus on tax cuts for the rich instead...
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